In the 22 years that The Charlatans have been together they
have endured more than most bands ever would. They have had huge success with
albums like Tellin’ Stories and Us and Us Only. They have also had to
face the grief of losing member Rob Collins in a car crash and drummer Jon
Brookes treatment for a brain tumour. We spoke to the faultlessly affable Tim
Burgess who has been the bands lead singer throughout their highs and lows.
You’ve just published
your memoir, what was the most challenging part of getting that together?
It’s just that I’d never written a book before I suppose,
it’s quite challenging. The fact that I don’t consider myself an author in any
shape or form. I said that at the beginning of the book, which kind of blew my
chances of anybody reading it. People got passed that and started to really
enjoy it. An agent approached me and asked if I’d thought of writing a book, I
actually hadn’t but lied and told him I had. Two years later I started writing
it after a lot of false starts.
Was there anything
you thought twice about putting in?
There’s a chapter on the Wu-Tang Clan that I didn’t put in.
The missing chapter I like to call it. I wrote about New Order, The Clash and Paul
Weller so I thought having the Wu-Tang Clan in there as well was pushing it too
far. I think everything made up the book, there were bits I thought were
missing towards the end but it was actually bringing it all up to date. All the
way through it I was changing my mind all the time, so I think it came out
quite considered. It’s got some brilliant reviews, I’m thrilled.
You are playing the
Magic Loungeabout festival this year, any others?
Yeah we’ve got a few festival things. We started off with
the idea of just doing 4, but it’s kind of grown a little bit this one and it’s
got out of control. I’ve heard very good things about the Magic Loungeabout
though.
Do you prefer playing
smaller or larger shows?
I’m easy, I just like the idea of playing, it’s always good
to shake it up a little bit. I just did this really nice thing in a gallery in
Newcastle, just in front of 40 people and I really enjoyed it. I like
everything I can’t deny it, I love it all.
When you look back
over your career how do you think you have developed as a singer?
Well I’ve tried a lot of stuff out. I’ve been in lots of
bands before The Charlatans, played bass in a band and played keyboards in a
band, not properly, 1-finger keyboards and all that. When I joined The
Charlatans to sing, I don’t know it’s kind of weird, as musicians, especially
Rob Collins, he was kind of like the leader and he played like the leader so
there wasn’t a lot of singing going on originally. It was quite a lot of organ
playing, so I didn’t really need to do that much and as time went on I started
getting to the front a little bit and singing over everything. Then I kind of
got stronger. There’s an album when I wanted to do something to completely
change my voice, another album where I gave up smoking, I didn’t have any
choice but that changed my voice. Even my speaking voice, I’ve completely lost
all the gravel in my voice now. I’m a lot more in control now I suppose. It’s
never something I’ve really thought about, a lot of it’s about presence as much
as singing really. You’ve got to be an enigma, you’ve got to be cool, that’s the
key.
You’ve done a solo
record, when’s that coming out?
I did one in 2003, and I’ve got another coming out in
September. I went to Nashville to meet up with a friend of mine, when I got
there he didn’t know what I was going to ask him so we went for coffee and I
just said ‘Kurt do you fancy writing a record together?’ This is Kurt Wagner
from Lambchop. We came up with about 6 ideas in the 10 days I was there then I
continued writing during the summer. It’s quite a Nashville style record, it’s
not like I’ve gone there and come back with a cowboy hat or anything like that
but it’s got elements of gospel, country and soul.
When Rob Collins died
how was it dealing with your grief in the public eye, most of us don’t really
have to experience that?
That’s a good point, we dealt with it in the public eye from
the word go you know what I mean, as soon as he died basically. It started off
with local reporters and obviously then the nationals, all that kind of stuff.
We had so much stuff that we hadn’t finished. There was an article we were
halfway through making at a magazine called the Face and it was to be the big
come back piece, the front cover page. We were halfway through it so we kind of
finished it off. We never had a second to think about it. At the funeral there
were lots of fans and people from the press, that kind of thing. It was really
weird but we didn’t know how to do it any other way, as a band we had quite a
bit of exposure straight away so we never knew how to do stuff in private
anyway. We do now of course but we were young. It didn’t seem abnormal, we just
kind of did it. I talked about it a bit in the book, the eulogy at the funeral,
it was like I was reading about a different person, I was just freaking out
because it wasn’t the person that I knew. It was quite weird trying to maintain
the person that we knew with keeping his family happy; it was two completely
different people.
Do you think having
that experience has kept you stronger as a band, you have managed to stay
together for a long time when not a lot of bands can do that?
I think the fact that we didn’t spectacularly fall out was
out of loyalty to Rob. At the time when he died, I think we felt we owed it to
him to keep his name alive, I don’t know why. Then for a while we had Martin
Duffy and he has a different character, he is a very happy guy and that helped.
Then you know, to find someone like Tony Rogers, who by chance used to live
just up the road from Rob and was also a Hammond organ player, it’s quite a
different instruments from any other keyboards, and he just fit in really well.
To a lot of people the 2 albums we did after Rob died were the best, people
seem to hold them really high to the rest of The Charlatans records.
There was a time when I thought about him every minute so I
think at the moment that I can just remember him now and again is quite cool.
It was really unhealthy for a long time, I think every member of the band dealt
with it in their own way of course. People would ask me all the time how I’m
dealing with it. I think it was quite an unhealthy thing. I had nightmares all
the time, talked about him when it was pretty raw. I think I’ve got a healthy
relationship with it now.
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